Is there a legal limit on late fees in Mississippi?

No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes). Mississippi has no statutory reasonableness standard and no percentage cap. Chapter 89-8 regulates neither the amount nor the timing of late fees, so enforceability is governed by ordinary contract and liquidated-damages principles.

Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Mississippi?

No statute addresses late-fee structure or timing, so daily fees are a lease-drafting matter, bounded only by common-law liquidated-damages principles.

What late fees can a landlord charge in Mississippi?

Verified July 11, 2026 All Mississippi topics →

Mississippi sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period — no statute regulates the amount, timing, or structure of late fees at all.

Cited to Miss. Code Ann. § 89-8-7 (1)(k) and 1 more Mississippi statute · Verified July 11, 2026

The one statutory hook is the definition of rent: Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-7(1)(k) counts late fees as rent only when they are 'required to be paid under the rental agreement,' so a fee written into the lease can be demanded and pursued as rent — including in the 3-day nonpayment termination notice under 89-8-13(5)(a) and the eviction that follows — while a fee that appears nowhere in the lease has no basis at all. That 3-day nonpayment window is a termination-notice precondition, not a grace period: nothing in Mississippi law delays a lease-based late fee from accruing the day after rent is due. With no statutory ceiling, the only limit on the amount is ordinary contract law on liquidated damages.

Mississippi late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes)
Mandatory grace period	None mandated statewide
Must be in the lease	Not addressed by statute
Daily fees	No statute addresses late-fee structure or timing, so daily fees are a lease-drafting matter, bounded only by common-law liquidated-damages principles. The chapter's only late-fee language is definitional: 'rent' includes 'any late fees that are required to be paid under the rental agreement by a defaulting tenant' (Miss. Code Ann. 89-8-7(1)(k)).
Reasonableness standard	Mississippi has no statutory reasonableness standard and no percentage cap. Chapter 89-8 regulates neither the amount nor the timing of late fees, so enforceability is governed by ordinary contract and liquidated-damages principles. Percentage figures circulating on landlord sites have no Mississippi statutory basis.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Mississippi Late Fee Laws (verified July 11, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/late-fees/mississippi/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Every figure above is cited to the Mississippi statute in the citations section below.

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Notes and caveats

Both blank answers mean statutory silence, not zero — Mississippi caps nothing and mandates no grace period because the chapter never addresses late-fee amount or timing at all. In the full current chapter, 'late fee' appears only in the rent definition at 89-8-7(1)(k); the remaining occurrences are eviction-affidavit mechanics in chapter 7, which reach non-dwelling tenancies.
Why 'must be in the lease' is unanswered rather than a yes — No statute conditions charging a late fee on a written lease. The practical in-the-lease requirement is a contract-law consequence of 89-8-7(1)(k)'s phrase 'required to be paid under the rental agreement' — a fee that appears nowhere in the lease has no basis — and not a statutory writing rule.
The 3-day notice is not a grace period — Expect to see the 3-day nonpayment termination notice of 89-8-13(5)(a) — or the pre-2022 5-day figure from the repealed chapter 7 procedure — recast as a 'statutory grace period.' Both framings are wrong.
Where the late-fee clause came from — The rent-definition clause at 89-8-7(1)(k) was added by SB 2473 (Laws 2018, ch. 446) and kept verbatim in the 2025 re-enactment, and it appears in both the enrolled HB 1200 (2025) text and the Attorney General's PDF.

Common questions: Mississippi late fees

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Is there a legal limit on late fees in Mississippi?: No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes). Mississippi has no statutory reasonableness standard and no percentage cap. Chapter 89-8 regulates neither the amount nor the timing of late fees, so enforceability is governed by ordinary contract and liquidated-damages principles.
Is there a grace period before rent is late in Mississippi?: None mandated statewide.
Does a late fee have to be written into the lease in Mississippi?: Not addressed by statute.
Can a landlord charge a daily late fee in Mississippi?: No statute addresses late-fee structure or timing, so daily fees are a lease-drafting matter, bounded only by common-law liquidated-damages principles.

Statute citations

Miss. Code Ann. § 89-8-7 (1)(k) (verified 2026) Official source
Miss. Code Ann. § 89-8-13 (5)(a) (verified 2026) Official source

How this record was verified: Mississippi's official code compilation is LexisNexis-published without directly readable section pages (lexisnexis.com/hottopics/mscode redirects to advance.lexis.com), so verification ran on directly published official state sources reconciled with mirrors: enrolled session-law texts on the Legislature's billstatus.ls.state.ms.us (SB 2461/Laws 2022 ch. 501 eff. 2022-04-21; SB 2328/Laws 2025 ch. 460 eff. 2025-04-10; HB 1200/Laws 2025 ch. 474 eff. 2025-07-01; SB 2473/Laws 2018 ch. 446 eff. 2018-07-01) plus the MS Attorney General's consumer-guide PDF reproducing the full pre-2022 act text, each figure used here reconciled verbatim against Justia (2025 code edition) and FindLaw (current through 2025-01-01): 45-day deposit return with its three-element trigger and $200 bad-faith penalty (89-8-21, unamended since Laws 1991 ch. 478 — three matching reads), 30-day month-to-month and 7-day week-to-week termination notice (89-8-19, three reads), 3-day nonpayment termination notice and 14-day cure notice (89-8-13, official + mirror), rent-definition late-fee clause (89-8-7(1)(k), official + AG PDF), and the municipal/county rent-regulation preemption clauses (21-17-5(2)(h) and 19-3-40(3)(g), FindLaw + Justia matching verbatim). Negative checks (no deposit cap, no interest/escrow, no entry statute, no late-fee statute, no rent-increase-notice statute) were run against the complete current chapter assembled from the AG PDF (pre-2022 sections) and all amending enrolled acts. Legislature per-section bill indexes swept for every 89-8 section, 2018-2026, and the full 2026 all-measures index searched: no live bills; HB 442, HB 499 and SB 2012 (2026) all died in committee 2026-02-03. A same-day (2026-07-11) read of the official Lexis compilation's search results sight-confirmed the chapter's current compiled span (§§ 89-8-1 — 89-8-45), the verbatim opening text of 89-8-21(1)-(2), and 89-8-13's post-2022 structure including the (5)(a) nonpayment clause; complete Lexis sight-reads of 89-8-21/-13/-19 and the 21-17-5(2)(h) lettering remain pending, with the figures shown here resting on the reconciled official sources above.